


Flow

by paperiuni



Series: Trifles from Thedas [7]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Comrades in Arms, Friendship, Gen, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 19:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5018188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's just another day of dragon battles, party bonding, and small realisations for Dorian.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flow

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posting from tumblr, la di da.
> 
> Check out this absolutely lovely [fanart](http://sometrashland.tumblr.com/post/132620615668) by Koutou :D

The dragon is on the last leg of her life: her jaws stream blood as she sprays fire and gore down upon the pair of Bull and Cassandra at her flank. Her wings snap up like a gale, Sera's arrows jutting from them like messy pinions.

Dorian angles a glyph underneath the dragon's head and feels the grit and wear in the magic, the drag of a long fight. The glyph erupts with glittering spears of ice just before the rush of the beast's buffeting wings slams into him. He tumbles headlong into scorched grass, barely still gripping his staff. On his left, Lavellan's feet scramble for purchase, too.

Coming back up, coughing through the ash and dirt, he hears the death rattle of the dragon. It's a momentous thing, a thunderclap sound drawn out over seconds until the ground shakes with the impact of her body.

He allows himself to drop against the brace of his staff. Its blade digs into the soft ground, kicked up as Sera bounds down from her archer's perch. Her ululating victory cry startles a laugh out of Lavellan, and then they're clinging to each other's arms, wild and elated with triumph.

"Did you see that?" Sera demands. "Pow, right down her gullet! Andraste's arse, did we just _do_ that?"

"You bet your twinkly eye we did," Bull declares helpfully. He's all grin and rough, effusive joy, striding up to the rest of them. Cassandra, more sparing in her jubilation, jogs up a few paces behind him.

"The Redcliffe farms should be safe again now." She draws a rag across the blood-dark edge of her blade. "Until the next unlikely calamity."

"Come on, Seeker!" Bull's thump on her back judders her forward half a step. "Live a little. Getting up on her back like that? Inspired. Gonna make a fantastic chapter in Varric's next serial."

"Only if someone tattles to the dwarf." Cassandra casts a poignant sideways look at Lavellan, who makes a surprisingly sheepish face in return.

"I don't think it's our stalwart leader you need to worry about," Dorian opines, while Bull sweeps Sera up on one arm so she can fall upon him in a whooping hug. Dorian's own mood is high as a wind-caught kite, with that strange, feral delight of survival.

"Oh, never," Lavellan says mildly. "Her good graces might not endure another spilling of details on my part."

Cassandra clears her throat. Dorian doesn't let it deter his yarn.

"He, on the other hand, may prove to be trouble." He flicks a hand towards Bull. "I recommend Cabot's worst ale for bribery. In quantity. If that fails, there are always Frances's little spice cakes, though they may--augh!"

His instruction to Cassandra is rudely broken by Bull pulling him off his feet and into a wild gleeful crush of a hug. His staff clatters away as Bull spins him in a haphazard circle.

"Oh, _vishante kaffas_ , put me down, you great lummox!"

"And _you_ ," Bull rumbles, merry and caked with dust and blood. "The dragonslayer himself. Might have to overlook your giving away all my secrets."

Dorian's irritation evaporates, small thing that it was, in the face of a crooked grin that slopes his mouth. "May we also pretend I _had_ realised I dealt the final blow?"

Something hot and pleased rises in his throat as Bull squashes him with a thick arm again: a rough-and-tumble embrace, both of them a-flush on the battle and its heady conclusion. Dorian slaps Bull on the back in return, carried on the wave of ready camaraderie.

"You got it, fire-spitter," Bull says against the top of his head. There's a different intimacy there, interlaced with their shared triumph. Dorian lets his throat work once.

_Let it be easy. This once._

"Well, then." He steps back, glances towards the three women, fallen into chatter of their own. "Shall we head back? I believe there's still a cask of Cabot's worst among our supplies."

"You keep track of the _ale_?" Sera pokes him in the one soft place left on his arm between the leather bracer and the pauldron. "After all that pissing and moaning about your dainty Orlesian wine running out the other day."

"I am sure there's something left for us to toast our victory." Cassandra sheathes her sword.

"If not," Lavellan says, shaking ash out of her hair, "we'll find some other way to celebrate."

"I got a few ideas." Ostensibly Bull speaks to all of them, but his hand, lingering on Dorian's back, is a more private rapport. Not one Dorian can quite decipher yet, but it sings in him like the surge of the fight, like a silent snowmelt, heralding a beginning.

He falls into step beside Bull.


End file.
